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Kool G Rap interview for hiphopgods.com
Friday, September 02, 2011 |
TIM EINENKEL: One of my first interviews was with “How to Rap” author Paul Edwards, which you write the foreword to; when I asked Paul why did he ask you to write the foreword his response was because you were out of all the rappers he interviewed for the book, they sited you as their inspiration to rap ---that said, do you hear your influence in rappers today? If so, which ones? How do you feel about these people saying you’re the reason why they started rapping?
KOOL G RAP: I mean, from the dudes that mention my name; the caliber of rappers that bring up G Rap’s name as one of their main influences, I mean it’s like a big honor to me, you know what I’m saying? It’s overwhelming, you know what I mean? You know I just take a lot of honor in that, you know what I mean. Especially with names, you know with the likes of Nas, Jay-Z, Eminem, Raekwon, Prodigy; you know, dudes that I really enjoy their craft and I really appreciate their craft. And I prop them just as much as they prop me. So to be looked at like that by these names is really incredible man.
TIM EINENKEL: The source of rap’s creativeness came from social, economic and racial inequalities. Rap is considered the “voice for the voiceless.” During the period you started rapping, it is easy to say where you got your inspiration came from (economic troubles caused by Reaganomics, etc) but now rap has become so successful it is hard to tell what’s fantasy and what’s reality, has rap benefited from it’s own success?
KOOL G RAP: I think it lost its hunger. You know what I’m sayin’? So, I mean by rap losing his hunger, it kind of lost its soul to me, you know what I’m sayin? But I think it is not so much in rap, it’s like music in general – just seem like it lost its soul. And that’s because we’re not in the same struggle like we were back then, you know what I’m sayin’? I mean, I grew up in the era where like my mother and other kids’ mothers that I knew, like they use to clean up white people houses. You know what I’m sayin-- (laughs) and things of that nature. It was a totally different struggle, you know what I’m sayin’? As oppose to now, kids like their parents have fairly decent jobs and make good money and stuff like that and live a lot more decent then how we grew up. I mean, we were still struggling, you know what I’m sayin’? We were a welfare generation. It was like totally different and it shows in the music now.
TIM EINENKEL: And how do you think this generation can get back that hunger? How can they learn to get that creativity again?
KOOL G RAP: I mean, I think they just have to stop repeating what they see somebody else doing. There are too many artists in the game that are doing it because they see somebody else doing it but it’s not really coming from the heart. It is just like they only see one side of it. They see the jewelry, the money, the women – and they just see that side of it. You know what I’m sayin’, like they forget all about struggle and pretty much rapping about topics that the majority of people could relate to. Because everybody can’t relate to driving around in a phantom; everybody can’t relate to a hundred, a hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of jewelry. It’s like where’s the struggle at! You know what I mean?
TIM EINENKEL: When you started out did you ever picture, or did you ever hope for rap to become this popular? Or did you worry that if it became this popular this would happen, which is occurring today in rap?
KOOL G RAP: You know what I really couldn’t put my finger on that back then when I was coming up. You know what I’m sayin’, but when I did start? Yeah, I did have plans to want to become popular, you know what I’m sayin’. But it wasn’t strictly to become popular, you know, to have money, to be rich or whatever. I mean, of course that’s part of the reason. But my main reason was, I wanted to share my talent with the world. You know what I’m sayin’, I wanted to give the world something what G. Rap could do. You know what I mean? And I think I accomplish that on so many different levels where it exceeded my generation that I came up in and it went passed that and it trickled on down to even maybe cats in the recent generation, you know what I’m sayin’? I mean, it really wouldn’t be a lot in this generation because they’re so detached from what the golden era would have been considered to be as far as Hip Hop is concerned. But I do get calls for features, so, I mean that obviously got to tell somebody something, you know what I mean?
TIM EINENKEL: Right. When somebody calls you up, how do you decide if you’re going to work with this artist or not? Is it anyone? Or do you look at their body of work and see what you can contribute? Do you like to take on those artists that you feel are lacking something and then kind of rap on their track to show them what they’re missing? How do you go about working with an artist?
KOOL G RAP: I mean, being that this is my bread and butter too, you know what I’m sayin’, I mean this is how I earn a living, I can’t be as particular as that. I would love to. I would love to sit there and really, you know chose and refuse on every single feature like that but this is how I make a living, so I pretty much just do what I gotta do to keep the lights on, keep a roof over my head and things of that nature . But if I had to –if I was in a situation where I could just sit back, pick, choose and refuse who I was going to work with, of course I would look at an artists…ah, number one I would have to feel an artist on a personal level, you know what I’m sayin'. I would have to feel like this artist is bringing something to the game that G Rap wouldn’t mind combining forces with them for a collaboration. You know, things like that but there’s another side to it, even if somebody lacks the ability to be as resilient or to be as standoutish as Kool G Rap is, I’m still honored that people from this generation are still hitting me to do anything with them and paying their hard earned money, you know what I’m sayin’ because a lot of it now really is people’s hard earned money; labels are not giving out half a million dollar deals like they were doing so much back in the day—like maybe the late 90s and maybe early 2000s. It’s not like that no more. Most of the people that come to G Rap to do features, it’s really their hard earned money. They’re building what they’re building, whether it’s a project or a label or a mixtape, they’re doing it on their own. Out of their own finances and all that. So, it’s really an honor for people to still be reaching out. I came out ’86. We’re in 2011 right now so for cats to still be reaching out like that, I mean take it like a…(laughs)…like a purple heart on the chest. You know what I’m sayin’? (laughs)
TIM EINENKEL: I actually want to get back to one of your old body’s of work, “Streets of New York.” You wrote the classic "Streets of New York" in 1988 during the Ed Koch years, many people say New York has changed for the better since. What would the streets of New York look like today?
KOOL G RAP: Wow, it would be a lot different. (laughs). It would be a lot different. Like you said, it did get better, you know what I mean. You don’t see as many crack addicts walking around in the street; things of that nature. I’m not saying it’s nonexistent but it’s still there to a certain degree but it’s not how it was in the 80's…not at all. The 80's was a real hot era. You know what I’m sayin’ as far as drugs in the streets and the violence was at an all time high. It didn’t just stay secluded to New York. It was all the urban neighborhoods across the map. From New York to D.C. to Philly to V.A. to Chicago to L.A. I mean it was just rampant, rampant with crime. It would be totally different right now because you can’t talk about things that are not happening. You know what I mean, so, some of the violence still there but if you look at now in comparison to back then there’s no more real kingpins like that. I mean the closest we might have had to something like that is might have been like BMF. (laughs)
TIM EINENKEL: You recently came out with Riches, Royalty and Respect. Being in the game for so long, what influences you? Where do you get your lyrics and inspiration from?
KOOL G RAP: Like I was just saying, the streets are not the same really and I’m not the same person I was more than a decade ago. So I’m not in the streets on a consistent like that. Everyday I’m running around in the streets or nothing like that or subjected to the same things I was subjected to, you know, years ago. So, in Riches, Royalty and Respect, I really had to dig back in the past. I really couldn’t go so much on the present times, I had to dig back in the past. And that’s why you feel such a 70s vibe on Riches, Royalty and Respect because I had to go back.
TIM EINENKEL: It seems like on your albums, and you’ve had many, your albums always have a story to them, so my question is, do you think the album itself a dying form? Seems today, rappers are only going for that one hit wonder single.
KOOL G RAP: Right, I mean when I was making Riches, Royalty and Respect, I knew I wasn’t catering to exactly what the Hip Hop audience of the present times is, you know asking for, you know what I’m sayin’ but I wasn’t trying to do that. You know what I’m sayin’? Number one, I don’t think I would have been able to do another album unless it came from deep within my soul, you know what I’m sayin? I didn’t want to just sit there and rap about anything. I didn’t have the energy in me to do that. It had to come from somewhere in the depths of my soul for me to even produce another album, period. At that point, you know what I’m sayin, I wasn’t trying to bend no particular way to please the sound of today, for the Hip Hop audience for what they want to hear today because to me that’s not G Rap anyway. This album (Riches, Royalty and Respect) was strictly for G Rap fans, underground Hip Hop fans, anybody that appreciates the true essence of Hip Hop and the grassroots of it, which is storytelling, lyrics, actually being creative, concepts, things of that nature; anybody that appreciates the grassroots of Hip Hop, this album was for them.
TIM EINENKEL: There’s something about your style, I want to kind of compare it to Raekwon. Raekwon does something to the rest of the Wu members that I think a lot of artists can’t do and that is he makes them step up their game. And it seems like the people that joined you on Riches, Royalty and Respect had to also step up their game when it came to rapping alongside you. So, do you still do you still do what you used to do with Big Daddy Kane back in the day, where you guys use to spit your verses on the phone together and try to top one another? Do you that with other rappers that joined you on the album?
KOOL G RAP: Well, I think anytime I do a feature with anybody and the artist knows they are going to have G Rap on the track. You know what I’m sayin’, whether it’s the artist himself that calls for me to be on the track with him or it’s the, maybe the producer and he lets the artist know “yo, I’m going to have G Rap on this track too,” I think that right there, people knowing in general that G Rap is going to be on the same track that they’re on, people kind of know, you know what I’m sayin’, “yo, I got to bring my A game to the table” because G Rap's…(laughs)…he’s going to come for decapitation. See what I mean (laughs). I’m going to take somebody’s head off. But that’s good because that kind of like positive competition right there. Like how you were mentioning when me and Kane use to spit back in the day. It was things that me and Kane really did where we weren’t being competitive with each other. We just basically—it just turned out to be that way because we were like the two spitters of the camp. You know what I’m sayin’, we were those two lyricists that just spit crazy like that, so every time me and him landed on something together, it sounded like it was a competition; like we might have been going at it but…
Actually even the track we did over his “Raw” beat, where we kind of freestyled over his “Raw” beat? That wasn’t like me and him going at each other, it was just like two of the best cats in the Juice Crew at that time just displaying their lyricism capability at their best and it sounded like the War of the Gods. To put anybody else on that track at that time that was really a spitter like that; like you could have put KRS-One and a Rakim or something like that, it would have sounded like we all were going for each other’s heads. You know, because that is how all these cats brought it. They just brought a real ferocious approach, you know what I’m sayin? Everything they were coming with was like “Yo,, you’re trying to murder somebody.” (laughs)
TIM EINENKEL: Speaking of two collaborations you did, I think that many of us were blown away by. One of them was with R.A. The Rugged Man and the other was with Chino XL. I’m wondering if there’s an album we can expect from you with any of those two artists in the future?
KOOL G RAP: I mean, Chino XL is a very good friend of mine. I got mad love for Chino and the same thing goes for R.A. The Rugged Man. I got mad love for R.A. so it’s always a possibility with these dudes…whether it be a Chino XL & G Rap collaboration in the future and the same thing about R.A.. Right now I’m doing a collaboration with the rapper Necro.
TIM EINENKEL: Yeah, can you talk about that actually?
KOOL G. RAP: We’re working on a project right now, it’s called The Godfathers. Necro’s an artist that, you know is very much a lyricist, you know what I mean? His skills as far as lyricism and word juggling—he’s a wordsmith. You know what I’m sayin’? He’s definitely a wordsmith and he’s got a crazy flow. So I got a lot of respect for Necro. As a matter of fact, he’s another one of the artist that G Rap had a lot of influence on and that’s probably why I hear Necro and like Necro’s material so much too because it’s like a reflection of me but in his own way. You know what I mean? Like when I hear Big Pun, I was like proud to hear Big Pun come out and hear that G Rap had influenced him. But hearing him bringing it to his own domain. You know what I’m sayin’ but bringing it with his own approach, so to speak. Same thing with Nas, you know what I’m sayin’? I was, like, proud to hear Nas come out and hear the influence. I heard the influence of Rakim in Nas as well. So to me Nas is like a combination of a G Rap and Rakim but in his own way, you know what I’m sayin’? But Nas is Nas. You don’t hear Nas and are like “he ain’t nothing but Kool G Rap” or “he ain’t nothing but Rakim.” He did it, just like when G Rap came out, people wasn’t going to say “Yo, he just sounds like another Melle Mel, “ or “he just sounds like a Kool Moe Dee.” No, you hear those influences in G Rap but G Rap sounds like G Rap.
TIM EINENKEL: Okay, this is my last question. I promise...
KOOL G RAP: (laughs)
TIM EINENKEL: If you stopped rapping today, which album or which song would you want to people to know you for?
KOOL G. RAP: Aw man, I can’t even narrow it down to one album…
TIM EINENKEL: (laughing) You’ve only had a 20 something year career, don’t worry about it.
KOOL G. RAP: (laughs) I mean, I’ll tell you the first albums that come to the top of my head and the ones I had the most fun doing and I feel like it’s some of my best work. Um…wow. Wow. Wanted Dead or Alive, I mean, Road to Riches too, but Wanted Dead or Alive, Live and Let Die, Roots of Evil, and this album right here, Riches, Royalty and Respect. I think I had the most fun doing these albums ‘cause I think the finished product turned out to be exactly what I expected them to be. As far as direction, vibes and since I’m known for storytelling and being cinematic, you know what I’m sayin’? I really love my cinematic albums. You know what I’m sayin’? The ones that stand out to me the most are the visual albums, you know what I’m sayin’? Those are like my pride and joy right there because, I mean I’m a writer, You know what I’m sayin’? I just don’t limit myself to just being a rapper or a lyricist, I’m overall a writer period. You know what I’m sayin’? Like right now I’m writing two movie scripts…so the albums that displayed that writing talent, those are the ones that stand closest to me, You know what I’m sayin’ because I really loved, I really loved the writing and creating visuals.
TIM EINENKEL: And definitely, listening to you when I was younger and until now, you definitely create those visuals I think all of us as rap fans, even as lyrics fans appreciate so much. I want to thank you for being on the show today.
KOOL G RAP: Absolutely man, it was a pleasure, thanks for having me.
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